


The Elephant's Blessing

by YawningOverTheTapestries



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cats, John is a Mess, John-centric, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Necromancy, Protective Mycroft, Tarot, Worldbuilding, but has a surprising talent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-03 19:06:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4111744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YawningOverTheTapestries/pseuds/YawningOverTheTapestries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three months ago, a geography professor was found poisoned in his office, and the detective who cracked the case accidentally suffered the very same fate. Amongst the evidence was an enigmatic piece of ivory, which was confiscated by Customs.</p><p>Bored by his mundane magic-free life, John collects cases like these.<br/>He really needs a new hobby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> As much as I hate leaving stuff unfinished, I wanted to write a one-off piece in a style totally different to what I'm used to.
> 
> If you want to blame anyone, blame trashbag!John, and Sherlock with his humanity being reborn in mysterious ways...

_20 th September_

 

"My God! She's... no."

The cool white light flickers in the cat's copper eyes, shivering in the liquid darkness like a fly landing on the surface of water.

"A-Annie?"

Molly seems to be scared enough for both of them, which is rather fitting.

"Annie?!"

Her hand is shaking, but tender, as she pets the cat, smoothing the scrubby grey fur. Despite the trembling, the whiff of formaldehyde, the limpness of the soft skin and loose bones of the cat, there's life there. Single lazy heartbeats.

Mycroft pulls his sleeves back down and his gloves back on, looking blankly down his nose at Molly's hunched form, the marbled dullness of the work surface, the heap of the cat's body.

"She's alive?!"

It's a question, instead of an exclamation, and it's not going to get answered. Molly rubs at the sweat collecting at her brow and pulls at filmy strands of her hair, perched right on the edge of her chair, sounding almost as mad as Dr Frankenstein but in a completely different way. She sounds scared completely shitless, instead of amazed.

"S-she's... "

 

By contrast, this is business as always for Mycroft. Without blinking he slips a handful of notes into her coat pocket, hanging from the back of her chair. He gives her a cool look, but still doesn't breathe a word. The cat spasms, for maybe a few seconds, eyes watering, limbs thrashing, claws flexed, as if all the nervous energy is bursting out. The once-feeble pulse now pumps wild and erratic. She tries to find her feet, but she can hardly remember how to stand, and the worktop is far too slippery. Molly's shaking gets even more violent as she tries to grab up handfuls of gangling cat, even as she gets scratches all over her hands. Gathered into Molly's arms, she keeps wriggling, making muffled rusty meowing.

The pathologist slips out of her chair, attempting to tidy herself and soothe the cat at the same time. Her dark eyes are huge, and she's gaping silently like a landed fish.

She stares meekly up at him, wary of how he will address her. He's a startling figure, tall and elegant, almost deathly pale complexion and opaque light eyes.

 

"Don't thank me, Dr Hooper. Maybe this will keep you content for the next few nanoseconds."

"Mr Holmes, I... I didn't want - "

He raises his leather-clad hand to her, a gesture to say _enough_. "Nobody at all need know anything. I trust I don't need to remind you of all the rules."

"What does... ?" Molly bends down a little to look at the full pocket dangling beside her. She puts two and two together and knows she has no way to question Mycroft.

"Don't worry yourself. You don't need to know all the bureaucracy involved in even the permission to resurrect a human."

Molly frowns slightly. "So it's not illegal?"

Mycroft raises an eyebrow. "Complete urban myth, Dr Hooper. Surprisingly prevalent even amongst those who actually practice this sort of thing."

 

The cat's claws catch on Molly's sleeves, the white fabric hanging on even when she digs in deeper. Molly doesn't flinch.

"Consider the money as a friendly encouragement to keep your lips sealed. You'll find it'll be more than enough to compensate you."

"Yes, but - Mr Holmes?"

He's not ignoring her as he retrieves his umbrella, even though he looks like he is.

"You are licensed to perform necromancy on... people... aren't you?"

"My licence was renewed last month. All I need to do is wait for my people to finish with it, which might take as long as another few days."

His answering her is so effortless, Molly feels a chill; as though he's scrutinizing her every move, but just because he can. Molly knows Mycroft always has his own agenda – why else would he be here? She just had no idea what he would be doing, or how he does it. Despite his reputation.

 

At last Molly’s cat stops writhing into her sleeves. The last echo of her cries bounces off the walls, as eerie as Mycroft melting away into the shadow. Even his footsteps are too soft to stand out over the silence.

“Good evening. I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”

All the evidence in the lab that he was even here, are the motion-sensitive lights coming back on outside the door. His silhouette is gone, but the corridor illuminates to the corners in his wake.


	2. Paper Doll

_24 th September_

 

“John. Wake up.”

Harry prods at the fat curled-up heap of blanket on the sofa. No response.

“Stop pretending you can’t hear me.”

Even after pulling blanket off his head and shoulders, he’s still dead to the world. John never looks relaxed when he's asleep, but right now those eye bags of his ought to have their own shelf in the fridge, and his ashen hair looks more like distressed hedgehog spines than anything else.

“Come on, you taxidermist’s reject, get the fuck _up_.”

There’s a glass on the coffee table, with a handful of half-melted ice in it, and she pushes it against the now exposed skin of the back of her brother’s neck. It works: John spills his limbs out of his neat hunch, with a cracked, half-awake shriek that sounds more like he’s still having a nightmare. And as he realises who it is, he calms down, puts his feet on the floor, and gives Harry a blunt, hostile stare. She’s not impressed. Ignoring him while he rubs some feeling back into his arms, she collects up the small flock of empty bottles standing on the floor, holding them primly as if they’ll poison her if she breathes too close to them.

“Dumped again?”

“Piss off.”

“Too bad. I’m here now. Told your landlady I want to try and help you, against my better judgement.”

 

John rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand, and he can start to register the rest of his surroundings. He gets a fairly vague impression of untidy piles of case notes, and a heap of newspapers beside the fireplace dating back nearly a month, and one of his many line drawings pinned to the wall to keep it out of the mess. Harry, though, seems too vivid for the umbrous, stuffy room, with her unruly blond ponytail and green blouse nearly too green for someone who works in Westminster.

“What are you doing here, Harry? If you’re here for another self-righteous older-brother-setting-bad-example lecture, I’m not in the mood.”

“Don’t sound all hungover. We ordinary people need to work as well. And that blog of yours hasn’t looked much better lately.”

Pieces begin to click together. “Is this about the ivory? Look, I’ve told you I’ll get someone to look at it, someone who has some actual knowledge of weird incantations, and it’ll all be sorted. The bloody thing isn’t just going to sit in there gathering dust. I know you nearly got into ridiculous trouble keeping it from getting disposed.”

Even from the living room, the off-white monolith propped against the bedroom wall, right on the other end of the flat, is easy to see, bright in the dark.

 

“No it’s not. Enchantment or no enchantment, the ivory’s not important anymore. Not to me, at least – even though it wouldn’t get _disposed_ while the spell is still there. But if you want anything more to do with it, you’ll have to take it up with the family, oh, what’s his name – ”

“ _Sherlock._ ”

“That’s the fella; the Holmes family. Technically, while the spell is still in effect, the ivory should be theirs.”

John looks sardonic at his sister, if still rather bleary. “Well, sorry for your awful memory. His parents renounced their claim on the overgrown tusk, and I don’t blame them. They probably didn’t want to see the thing their son was found lying dead on in their house every day. Besides, with all the dodgy necromancy rumours milling about, they wouldn’t want anything with a magic that powerful anywhere near them.”

Harry looks up from rummaging in her bag, with a snort of sarcastic mirth. “Necromancy? Do people still want to bother with that? And he’s been dead for months now. Sorry, John.”

Sad-eyed, John slumps back in his seat like a forlorn teenager.

 

“Here, this’ll put the bit back in your mouth.” Harry produces a more recent newspaper from her bag and opens it at page 14. John pulls a puzzled frown as he reads the first few passages.

“Professor Trevor’s son? Released without charge?”

“Yep. Of course you know the gang at the Yard better than I do, but if spiked South African liquor can fly through the air out of its glass and hit a man in the face on its own, I’d like to see that.”

“Is that why you’re here? A new page for my case file disguised as a goodwill gesture?”

Now Harry has a genuine smirk, which John can’t see, as she’s pulling the curtains open. Light floods in, and John gets a proper idea of how much of a toll last night is taking, crushing his hand against his eyes to shield them.

“If the surgery still doesn’t need anyone for locum work, go and get a statement from him. The press might just love you. And your landlady, of course.”

 

Nonetheless, John seemingly will never to shake off the thought of how much trouble this great, innocent-looking hunk of ivory is worth. He waits until his sister has shoved off; the restored peace offers a veil of solitude, as often happens in the flat. Until the quiet becomes such that John is only too aware of the noise his footsteps make. It might be merely the last phase of his hangover, but he feels more comfortable sitting down on the bedroom floor. Just in front of the ivory.

The ivory has such an immense beauty about it: how hard and solid it is, yet oddly soft under John’s hands, warm compared to porcelain and its fragile coldness; how clear its colour is, not quite pure white and not quite the rich cream of bone, with a true opaqueness and still able to shimmer in the strip of light from the door; how it seems beautifully organic, and yet hauntingly alien at the same time.

In absolute honesty, John is pretty proud of himself, how he’s managed to snare this prize from his sister, from the hoard of confiscated treasure at HMR&C. Ivory gets harvested by the kilogram all over Africa and India, breaking laws as it crosses borders as if laws are bones themselves. This one piece is the keystone to a murder and an enchantment, and even though it’s all blown over now, the ivory still has the same aura around it. After all, the spell is still bound to it, and John hasn’t got the faintest bloody clue how to break it.

 

Oh, his head seems terribly heavy, and his eyes hurt. Even with no lights on and the curtains drawn and everything… slowly, his already feeble vision fades, until the wall and the ivory are little more than blurred black and white. Well, mostly white now – John’s leant his head forward until his forehead is resting on the white surface, and it feels about as comfortable as floorboards, but it’s a nice temperature…

When he’s rubbing his nose into the misted warmth, where he’d breathed out onto it, he comes round for long enough to unpeel himself off the floor and crawl into bed fully clothed. Mrs Hudson left the duvet folded over, so the bed isn’t as warm as John anticipates. It’s a double bed as well. Too big. John’s not really used to that. It’s a bit empty…

 

 

 

_2 nd October_

 

Anthea certainly is well trusted to watch, keeping at the perfect distance to monitor Mother and Father while they’re in town during the day. With a promise from Mycroft that he will time his visit home down to the last second, and his car will be ready to pick her up with plenty of time to spare.

 

Mycroft only has a key to the front door, but lifting the locking spell to the private chambers in the house is not much more difficult.

Despite this room’s setup being complete for a mere few weeks, it already doesn’t seem perfectly pristine, but now has a strange veneer over it, almost like spiderwebs. There’s just enough dust to fly up into translucent plumes cloying in his eyes and catching in his throat, with an aftertaste that’s both bitter and stale.

Grief sometimes resembles a curse: not a serious sickness-inducing one, but a curse that exposes the cracks already there, hastily papered over.

 

The room itself is a matchbox, tiny and crammed full with a ridiculous amount of stuff. The wardrobe takes up half the room, mahogany so it almost fades into the background, and a slightly dusty satin thing draped over it. And there’s a near-complete replica of the Strand in cardboard boxes, taped and labelled with marker-pen hieroglyphics, and piles of scrapbooks, some too fat with loose paper to be stacked up properly. One piece slips out; the idly scrawled smiley-face on it makes Mycroft’s throat tighten again. He wants to pick it up and repatriate it to its rightful place, but his back and arms have suddenly stiffened.

His fingertips are too light over the dry fraying edges of tape, paper and cardboard smooth from disuse. Even the skull, sat atop one stack of boxes, has a perfect ghostly film of dust over it, and Mycroft immediately feels guilty for smearing it. Dust is so delicate, especially on the hard dull surface of the skull. And it just stares malevolently at him. As if it’s accusing him for all those years of petty grudges and dumb rivalry.

The elder Holmes brother doesn’t dare to touch anything else; certainly not the violin case, which he notices a second later, black and velvety and starting to crack at the hinges. It hasn’t been opened for months, which means the instrument inside would be flawless. Quite irrationally, he’s sure the sight of that will finish him off.

 

It feels like sealing a tomb up, closing the door again. Mycroft gives a long sigh through his nose as he lets the handle click. He taps the lock to restore the spell, and lightly traces a few words over the painted surface of the door.

 

_W.S.S.H_

_6 th January 1976 – 17th July 2013_

 

The words glimmer silver, just as the sunlight hits them. From any other angle, they vanish.

 

 

The rest of the house, hanging with spells of life instead of death, takes a moment to get used to. It’s quiet. Way, way too quiet.

The black casting board hangs almost cheerily on the buttermilk-painted wall, like a child’s chalkboard; the usual pentagram gets drawn on it so regularly, there’s still a pale shadow of it. It fits in with the funny hotchpotch of domesticity and supernatural of this house, with its oak furniture, and the wine-red rug on the floorboards, and white carnations in crystal vases, beside silver candles on the mantelpiece. Only select few knew Sherlock had a soft spot for these flowers, looking like the heads of silk lions.

It’s not Mycroft’s way to brood like this.

But then again, losing Sherlock dealt everyone in the family a deep blow. Father was unpredictable, flitting from burying himself in silent sorrow in his office, to keeping up tireless chirpy conversations about everything else in the world, his youngest son kept at arm’s length. Mummy, meanwhile, became a hyperbolic version of herself, studying her cards and crystals at obscene hours, churning through all the paperwork and enclosing Sherlock’s remains behind that hexed door with killer efficiency.

 

Beside the bookcase, there’s the owl perched on her stand, a pert, dignified creature clad in creamy feathers and a peachy face about sixty-percent eyes. She has her own stare, not as unforgiving as that of the skull, but certainly just as entrancing. She’ll make you believe she cannot actually blink, and then prove otherwise just for the surprise.

“ _Must_ you look at me like that, Sherrin? I’m trying to relish the time I have left before the troupe of flying monkeys come in to roost.”

Those impossibly chocolaty eyes just keep staring. Does that make her look wise, or stupid? Either way, it probably doesn’t matter.

Mycroft extends a hand to stroke at her breast. “Truly. They never dare to mention him to any visitors, except me. Then they need to have their vocal chords forcibly tied together to shut them up.”

 

The owl may be a very peaceful animal, but she is unmistakably _alive_. Standing out like a clown on a cricket pitch, even with the beautiful golden-framed pictures hung here and there. Each one is coaster-sized, and an example of Mycroft’s particular talent. There’s one that catches people’s attention every so often, but they don’t ask. It’s a setter, with plumed ears and a feathered coat polished like opal and the deep red of a fresh sweet chestnut. But he’s lying down on his side with legs resting beside each other, eyes shut and chest rising and falling softly. He could be innocently asleep. Almost cruelly, he’s deliberately made to look like this.

The family lost Redbeard when Sherlock was thirteen and Mycroft was twenty. The old dog’s owner was heartbroken, and his elder brother was still a year away from applying for a licence to bring anything back from the dead.

Not that he would have been able to without resulting in everyone from asking all the nasty ethical questions. And nobody in the universe suffers grief poorly like Sherlock – at that age he was beginning to dabble in the dark world of crime investigating, and losing his most trusted friend got Sherlock putting high walls up scarily rapidly.

It took another four years for Mycroft to perfect his own dark art, even though he barely practiced it on anything. Sherlock brushed off the whole idea, on the mantra of ‘some dead things should stay dead.’

 

And therein, is the great irony. Living on the edge became Sherlock’s Achilles Heel. Mycroft feels guilt, without question, but sometimes it makes him feel quite angry.

His voice sounds so tense he almost doesn't recognise it. "Nobody _in the world_ has any power over what's _fair_."

 

 

 

_3 rd October_

 

“Dr Watson, do I look like I know anything about forensic alchemy?”

“ _No_. That wasn’t what I asked. I just asked, when you were absolutely sure you knew what it was that had been used to poison the liquor."

"The post-mortem said it was a neurotoxin, and a powerful one. It worked when it got thrown in his face. That’s just _what I saw_. It paralysed him and he was dead in _ten minutes_. We just walked in and saw him slumped on the ivory. It was all a horrible _accident_.”

John has one hand slightly raised, to try and calm him. Bedside manner has always been important in John’s line of work, even though he doesn’t just do it in the surgery anymore.

“Victor, just… it’s fine. Yes, it was an accident, and everyone knows that now. I was just hoping this would be a chance for you to give your side of the story.”

“I know. I appreciate that, and if you’re gonna put this on your blog, I thought you’d want to have the full story.”

 

Stirring his coffee with an acidic expression, Victor looks as angst-ridden as he did when his father’s body was found in his office. Admittedly, the evidence pointing towards his being responsible was little more than circumstance, and it took a boring process of digging through the clues, before Sherlock got a real idea of what truly happened.

And his bereft old friend didn’t seem willing to get involved then, and he certainly doesn’t want to now. He arrived here nearly a quarter of an hour before the time John agreed to meet him, and could have disappeared so easily into the wall behind his table. And he looks pretty young, which is spooky, with his eyes set deep in his babydoll face, his hollow cheeks, his strawberry-blond hair sticking out in every direction.

By contrast, John is definitely not what Victor expected to see, for a physician and collector of mysteries. Somewhat younger, perhaps, if slightly worse for wear, but diffident and apple-cheeked and kind Prussian blue eyes. He’d blend into the background even easier than Victor would. He’s affably listening away to Victor being stroppy, forearms lightly crossed on the tabletop before him. John is guarded, and his open expression belies this. He may be empathetic, but he’ll dispassionately glean what he hears from Victor, as he does with everyone.

“I’ve got an outline of the case itself, how the Professor was in business with his friends in Hampshire, and started a deal with these characters in Australia…” John has his notes kept on one page, even with the characteristic messy doctor’s handwriting. “under the name James Armitage, and, er… while on a lecture trip in Cape Town he picked up a load of peculiar things, and then fell out with this guy Evans, and a lot of the money disappeared.”

Despite the litter of notes and photographs Victor drops in front of him, he’s refusing to look anywhere other than his hands.

“Alright, a shitload of blackmail later, Evans shuts his old friend up by spiking a few bottles of liquor he’d nicked from the hoard to take home, with a dodgy spell that’d kill anyone who’d so much as suck the cork.”

John picks a photo up from the pile. A fat, long-necked brown decanter, with a white label sporting an elephant. “Amarula Cream, distilled from the wild mango-type fruit growing all over the place in South Africa. The proverbial Elephant In The Room, and Sherlock found it was what stitched the whole thing together. And, of course, by some horrible twist of fate the bottles got mixed up, and when Evans poured himself a glass, Sherlock ended up with it on his face. And… ”

Victor looks up at John with raw pain in his eyes.

“…yep. We know the rest of the story. I really am sorry.”

John rests his hand comfortingly on Victor’s forearm.

 

“Did you ever meet him? Sherlock Holmes?” Victor manages to ask, his throat tight.

John shakes his head, his brow furrowed.

“I was at Uni with him. He was a complete pain in the arse.”

Neither of them are really in the mood for jokes.

“He was my friend, though.”

John hums, and he pushes the jumble of bits of paper back into order.

“I’d heard of him before, with the whole business about Carl Powers, and then after we graduated I never heard from him again. Next time I saw him was in the papers with the all the fuckery about Moriarty.”

John looks just as bitter as he nods; he can remember that as well.

“I’ve admired him for ages, and I seriously regret that I never got to meet him.”

Victor looks back down at his coffee. “Yeah, well… ”

John drains the last of his own in one gulp. “Well, Victor, it was great to meet you. And I’ll probably get this typed up in the next week or so… can I borrow these?”

Victor glances up just long enough to see John has scooped up every last bit of paper. “Oh, you can keep those.”

 

John makes it halfway across town before thinking that _might_ be a bad decision. And how he really should do with a new hobby. Or maybe just get laid.

 

 

 

_31 st October_

 

Mrs Hudson doesn’t take long to descend on Mycroft, cruising into the doorway armed to the teeth with snacks. “Make yourself comfortable, dear. So sorry the parents couldn’t make it, I was looking forward to seeing them. How are they? How are they, dear?”

“They’re doing fine, by all accounts.” Mycroft replies sourly, propping his umbrella into the stand, adorned with green and gold sparkles like seemingly everything else in the flat.

He keeps up his prim expression as he’s pinned into a seat and handed a fresh glass of brew, which steams offensively in his face.

Mycroft is far from a cat person, but Gladstone is a stunner of a cat, demanding the attention of everyone who walks in. Posed on the table close to the window, bathed in the lavender light from the evening, he’s alarmingly big, with an inky black coat, luminous green eyes, luxuriant whiskers, and heavy feathery fur over his throat and belly and tail, fringing his legs and tufting from his ears. Mycroft raises an eyebrow at him, and Gladstone just stares right back. Perhaps he knows he won’t get any petting or any kind of fuss from him. Compared to Molly, who’s finished off her latest glass of Mrs Hudson’s weird yet warming autumn brew, and is returning to his side to continue stroking him. She’s dressed to the nines, in her midnight-coloured, velvety frock with long sleeves and stars sprinkled across the hem, and smoky eyes and her hair in a messy high bun. She actually looks witchy, while Harry looks pretty garish in a flashy blouse, beside John, wearing a shirt in a wicked shade of orange he’s likely been forced into. Mrs Hudson, the only true witch in the room, is as little-old-lady-esque as ever.

 “It’ll be your first All Saints’ Day without poor Sherlock, won’t it? Poor dear.”

“What do you suggest we do about that?” Mycroft asks with obviously faked sweetness.

“Dress up as him tomorrow night?” Harry offers, casually leaning forward for the crisp bowl.

“That’d just be appalling taste,” John counters bluntly. Molly goes white, Mrs Hudson looks disappointed, Mycroft visibly disgusted. Even Gladstone flattens his ears and narrows his eyes at him across the room.

 

Mrs Hudson plants the plate of twiglets back on the table, and then crosses the room to the red fabric armchair, retrieving from the back of it, what looks like a folded blanket.

“Here, boys, I have something I want you to see.” She positions herself between John and Mycroft, and unfolds the blanket: it’s one of her own creations, and it looks and feels like a massive crochet spiderweb made from spun alpaca fleece, the colour of it blending from plum to cool green to grey, and it’s meshed with beads and buttons. The boys give it a discerning, yet fascinated one-over.

“This one,” she points towards a white mother-of-pearl button, tucked into the wool about nine inches from the edge, “this one is one your mother gave me, Mycroft. She said it’ll bring good fortune.”

John laughs through his nose with cheery disdain. Mrs Hudson’s unfazed.

“There’s a lot of things like this, John. A lot of people find them useful. I could cast something with a bit more substance, if you’d rather.”

“No need, Mrs Hudson. I’m doing my best.”

“Yes, I know, and I’m glad. I just think it’ll be easier for you, for us, if… ”

“I know, I know. I need to get back to work.”

She gives him a mock-exasperated shake by the arm. “That wasn’t what I was about to say. Harriet, can you be a dear and pass that box there to me?”

Harry leans left, then right, with no worries about personal space and muttering how she hates her full name.

“Thank you, dear, now, John, I’ll let you borrow these. Take care of them, and if you don’t think they’ll work for you, you can give them back.”

She produces out of the shoebox a pack of cards, lavishly patterned and a little dog-eared, and gives them to John; he squints warily down at them, before tucking them into a pocket.

"What about the ivory? Is anything going to happen to it? Is it getting sold or anything?"

"Oh God, no. Certainly not while the bloody spell is still over it."

Mycroft side-eyes him, but says nothing.

 

 

Skipping up onto the chair beside Molly’s is a lanky little grey cat, and she nonchalantly curls her tail round her feet, and then she realises Mycroft has materialised in this room; she bristles, flicking her ears, and starts to groom her paws, as though she wants to distract herself. Annie’s presence gets quietly tolerated by Mycroft, and everyone else.

Molly reaches over to scratch behind Annie’s ear, and glances with a tinge of suspicion at the bespoke figure across the room.


	3. Shatterings

_4 th November_

 

John still loathes the cards, just a little. When he first came to live at Baker Street he really hated them, as he saw no sense to a lot of magic.

That was a long time ago. Since then he’s seen a heck of a lot. Palm readers in Camden Market; healers sneaking into the specialists’ on Harley Street; the rugged alleys where dogs and cats meet to talk about humans in privacy. Mrs Hudson still insists on hanging heather on the frame of his door, replacing it every time he plucks it off. Even when he first moved in, and the horrible little curse in his bad leg was solved in a heartbeat, it still took John a long time to accept what magic can do. He still doesn't fully.

 

_The Hanged Man. The Hermit. Death._

Mrs Hudson understands, thankfully. She always wanted to help him. Still does.

_The Tower. The Magician. Justice._

John often finds Gladstone to be good company. Curling up beside him, washing his ears, nuzzling at his side making creaky yowling noises until he gets petted, purring like a motorbike against the warmth of John's lap.

Just as cats do, Gladstone always does as he pleases, either sneaking out to stalk his part of the road, or languishing indoors in some corner of the flat. And he’s excellent at finding John, whatever he’s doing, and making it his own business, gluing himself to John’s lap for hours at a time. And for some bizarre reason, John doesn’t really mind having black fluff clinging to all his clothes very much.

 

_Death. Temperance. The Magician._

With a loud disparaged sniff, John pushes all the cards back together.

 

Gladstone manoeuvres himself right onto the cards, smearing the cards into a wide puddle again, curling on top of them, feet tucked under and head nested in his ruff, and he starts purring. After giving him a friendly scratch behind the ear, John unfolds from the floor, and paws about for Victor’s photographs.

The case of Professor Trevor, and subsequently, what became of his son, is up on the blog, and it only has half a dozen of these photos on it; half the comments on it are complaining how there are no pictures of Sherlock on there, which is ironic, John thinks, as when the case reached headlines, _everyone_ in the fucking country saw the last images of Sherlock Holmes.

There’s a newspaper clipping of the famous one: Sherlock limp and nearly dead on his face, on the ivory laid on the floor. He’s gripping the front of it, loosely, as all the life is gone in his hands. The curse paralysed its victim, which would have numbed Sherlock virtually completely, before suffocating him. It would have been quick and clean, but over in the snuffing out of a candle. John has speculated a thousand times how Sherlock might have clenched in the disgust of having (yet another) drink thrown in his face, hand in his eyes as he tried to wipe it off, how the feeling in his hands and head would have seeped out, how he might have felt light-headed as air was draining from his lungs, wanting something to lean on. All over in minutes.

 

Gladstone stretches out his front legs, yawning to show off his long white canines. A few cards slide across the carpet and towards where John is standing. The Empress, The Sun, The Moon, Death.

John starts to pick them up, but he pauses once he’s looking at Death.

It’s a tall elegant figure, with white features as angular and shadowed as a walking skeleton, with a hollow sadness to his face, and wrapped in a long sharply-drawn black coat. This is a very cruel coincidence: in life, Sherlock favoured long coats and dark colours, always having to commandeer the attention of the entire room as he’d walk in. And he had the most incredible face on the planet, John has convinced himself, with impressive cheekbones and severe yet wise ice-grey almond eyes.

During the first couple of months, retelling the story of Sherlock’s death, even in his head, made John start to feel sick. It’s his trade, to know how these sorts of things work, how the human body works, and he hated himself for it.

 

Gently poking Gladstone off the rest of the cards, John scoops them all up, and just for the hell of it, reshuffles them and deals them out one more time.

_Judgement. The Fool. The Tower._

Now John feels like he’s being mocked. Yes, he’s sometimes a little afraid, of wasting away into his shadow, as he did when he first was invalided home from Afghanistan. The time passed far too quickly. Fear of intransigence is rather stupid, because nobody, no magic, nothing in the world, can truly predict the future with genuine accuracy. And suddenly, for maybe too long, John had been playing Grandmother’s Footsteps with Sherlock, making his own blog feature the man even more than himself, getting entangled with press and police, and still escaping from trouble by the skin of his teeth.

It gave him something to focus on, and paid the rent when the crazy shifts at the surgery wouldn’t be enough. It also got him laughed at, for obsessing over someone he’d never meet. It’d end it tears, surely. They were all right, it seems.

 

 

 

Across town, Mycroft is making his usual pilgrimage to the sealed room full of Sherlock, and this time he’s gathered up the courage to step in deeper. Deep enough to reach the wardrobe: he envisions taking down the satin dressing gown and putting it actually inside the wardrobe, for the simple reason of respect, and also it being carelessly flung there is nightmarishly Sherlock, the legacy of over thirty years of untidiness, even after flying the nest.

 

However, opening the wardrobe’s doors is cutting down to the quick. It frees a stale, cold belch of the musty fragrance that still persistently hangs in Sherlock’s empty spaces, a sickening aged version of his living essence. Like a poltergeist yawning after a sleep that lasted centuries.

Mycroft does his utmost best to ignore it, scrunching his face as he claws inside for a free hanger. And he takes insidious _ages_ to arrange the slippery soft thing on the hanger once it’s on, pulling it this way and that, as it slides back and forth. And, hooked onto the dusty blue satin, there’s one perfect loose coil of cinnamon thread, surprisingly bright red-brown on the blue, as fine as a human hair – wait, it _is_ a human hair. _It is!_ Could only have been from one person. Mycroft picks it off, curling it round his thumb and forefinger, his head reeling at the staggering number of hair-ruffling memories it invokes. Sherlock hated the first one as a four-year-old, when the mop had become enough mop to ruffle, and every one since. It became a big part of the motivation of the ruffles, unlike those Mummy gave him. She just did it for the whole motherly-affectionate shebang.

 

Speaking of which, the voices elsewhere in the house are getting restless. He has to go. This ‘toilet break’ surely must be too long, even for those who weren’t once mathematics professors.

Regardless, if those morons had the nouce to properly use their meagre brain cells, they’d have understood by now how Mycroft plays the devil’s advocate in this family. Besides, after Mrs Hudson gave him an ostentatiously big box of sweets on All Saints’ Day, placing it on the coffee table where all the tea-wielding vultures could help themselves to chocolate insects really was just to prevent him from emptying the box himself.

There are even crystallized flowers, a particular favourite of Mummy’s, which pleases her immensely. She’s the one who’s normally the hardest to shut up in these situations, and miraculously she’s still polishing them off when Mycroft comes back in. He stuffs in a pecan drenched in honey, jamming his teeth together, and slumps back into his seat on the sofa like a sullen child fussed over too much. The stray curl sinks away into his pocket; perhaps Mycroft will later think he dropped it on the way out of Sherlock’s sealed room.

 

 

 

_7 th November_

 

It’s the best part of a sleepless night before John realises what it is that keeps coming back to haunt him. The almighty white beast has been sitting in his bedroom for months, and he hadn’t even seen what was in front of his eyes.

The corresponding photograph only has the front two thirds of Sherlock in it, and his flop of curls stops about seven inches from the end of the block. John really needs to stop letting his guts’ contents rise up like heartburn-medication-overdose _every bloody time_ he looks at it.

Predictably all John’s full shots of Sherlock have been taken at a considerable length, and he has to dig through the archive of the blog to find them all. Match this with his tape measure and a few bits of metric well-ingrained into his memory, and he starts drawing out the beginnings of his dastardly dark plan.

 

John already knows the measurements of the block: 80in by 56in by 46in. Obviously.

This may just be him being his usual obtusely thick self. He _really really_ has to double- and triple-check.

 

His conclusion: Sherlock is just shy of six feet tall, and despite the heavy overcoat, he’s lean and fit, and the ivory would have been more than big enough to encompass all of him, with a generous amount to spare. John slowly pushes the ivory into the light by the window, and redoes all his measurements. Rubbing the heel of his hand against the warmed pale surface, John questions his rapidly declining sanity for the umpteenth time, and wonders if he really means what he’s doing, or if he’s working on autopilot.

But every so often, John can also be almost stupid in his bravery. He gives a light sigh when he looks at the clock, noticing he spent nearly three hours being scared about the ivory’s dimensions being what would ultimately prevent him from recreating Sherlock in it.

 

 

 

_19 th November_

 

“No, I really mean it, thank you so much for helping me get it out of the bedroom. It’s just the light in there that’s rubbish.”

“John, will you stop? It’s been over a week now. And I appreciate you generally being a dickhead to me and everyone else who tries to dig you out of your burrow of whiskey bottles and autopsies, _when_ you apologise afterwards. And I personally have had it up to my eyeballs for ages, so you’re just wasting breath saying thank you now.”

“Oh, very nice. That’s just classic you, isn’t it? You’re perpetually sick of me being a waste of oxygen, then when I try and be nice it turns into ‘who are you and what have you done to my fucking brother’.”

 

Harry sizes up the ivory, now basking beside the window and nearly obscuring access to the tall bronze floor lamp with its globe-shaped shade. It doesn’t dominate the room, but it is rather glaringly obvious, something one can’t help keep giving sideways looks at. Weirdly, it looks bigger, in a bigger space. Bigger than it did in the bedroom. And this may just be the magic, but its seeming caught on the crux of real and unreal has been magnified, in this less forgiving light.

“What are you actually going to do with it, anyway?”

John is far from prepared to answer her. “I’ll think of… something.”

“Yeah. It’d better be worth all the trouble it got us both into. And turning my place over to find _them_.”

She points to the folded brown leather John has in his hands. They’d been handed to him almost as soon as once she’d stepped into the flat, over a week after she’d helped him move the ivory (for no other reason that he didn’t know who else to ask) with a suitable puzzled look that just summed up how he’d given them next to no thought for such a long time, until now.

“I know, it must have been a surprise when I said I want these back. And now I just think I ought to have them here. Obvious, really. If I can’t do anything else with the ivory, I could… do this.”

 

“Is it going to have any effect on the spell, d’you think?”

John pulls an odd face. “I’d have thought you’d know better than I would. But I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

 

“Hmm… anyway, I have a train to catch, I need to be in Cardiff this afternoon.” Harry even looks distracted peering at her watch.

“Yes, of course… thanks for bringing these over, again.”

John doesn’t have much trouble shooing his sister out the door this time. Maybe he really has lost his mind.

 

No matter – they agreed a while ago that this thing is his responsibility now, and whatever he does with it, it’ll be his problem. And all the while, the spell has and will always have a mind of its own, whatever effect the size and shape of the ivory will have on it.

The leather encases a set of tools, ranging from rather intimidating-looking mallets and chisels to very fine, delicate files and rasps. Ivory has a consistency much like that of jade, and it keeps its shine even after receiving a good hammering. John hasn’t touched them for several years, but he’s trying not to worry about his sculpting hands being rusty.

 

There’s that old saying, of course: the first cut is always the deepest. 

John clamours up onto a chair, making sure he’s sat comfortably on it, and can reach high enough. He draws up a doorstep about four inches thick off the top, and slowly begins to slice it off. His small hands are stiff round the chisel, and clenched, still, as he rubs his knuckles against the softening surface.

A light rain of creamy dust begins to collect on his hands, and on the floor; there’s newspaper laid around it, but not much ends up on it, as the ivory doesn’t splinter nearly as badly as anything else John has worked with, even after such a long time. He can remember being told, years ago, when he was starting to experiment with these skills at university, that this is something you never completely lose. Somehow your hands can retain the ability to be firm and gentle at the same time. Like how this, like taxidermy, or even spinning fabric, is caught between science and art. And there’s not even any need for magic.

There’s no evidence of the spell having any effect on the ivory, as John takes this lid off the top, apart from a slight rise in temperature, on the newly exposed innards of the ivory. Which is, put bluntly, just really weird.

 

The slices of ivory John manages to sever off are as wide and thick as pieces of a strange white set of armoured plating. They form a stack on the side table like hugely swollen playing cards.

 

The last chunk snaps off, and after John puts it down, the tools go down as well, if just to rest his hands. They’re not too sore, but they might be in a few hours.

These plates would cover A4 pieces of paper, and the chiselled surfaces are still surprisingly smooth, especially once all the dust is cleared off. Alongside them are a handful of smaller ones, the smallest being no bigger than a shot glass.

 

 

Hours later, with the plates tucked safely away and the newspaper gathered up, John wriggles Gladstone to one side on the red chair so he can sit down, with the small ivory piece and a few of his smaller tools; he whiles away the duration of the gladiators movie on in the background sawing down the chunk, slowly, rhythmically shrinking it down until it’s tiny.

It can fit in the palm of his hand, once he’s shaken all the dust from his hands onto the newspaper on the floor. His hand is even lighter on the round sharp chisel, made for detail, as he drills a piercing through it.

It ends up on the mantelpiece beside some unpaid bills. This is where it’s left, and John really should go and get some sleep now.


	4. Affair de la Coeur

_31 st November_

 

John finally decided to draw the line somewhere, and _didn’t_ write ‘Leave Me Untouched’ on a Post-it note to stick on the ivory. And yet, he’s desperate to keep the promise he made to himself: to not touch the block of ivory, until he’s finished with all the pieces he sliced off the top of it. He’s not comfortable with calling it paranoia, or anything of that ilk, but he can’t help himself. This is the only chance he’s got to do this, so he’d better not make any mistakes.

He consciously tries to make a habit out of leaving the big pieces untouched, by having the small pieces around where he can reach them. So far, they have ended up taking up all the room on small tables, used as bookends and paperweights, propped beside the radiator or on the mantelpiece with a fire going underneath them. Gladstone likes lolling over them, stuffing his face against them, as if they’re the most wonderful soft plush things in the world.

 

The first little white slab of ivory has now been worn down with files until it feels as perfectly smooth as a thick piece of printing paper on both sides. John loves turning it over and over, until it’s his hands that have done almost as much work as his files have. Even the corners are softened, the jagged tear-edges rounded off.

He sanded down two more slabs until they were near-identical, but after he’d finished, John started to experiment, sanding deeper into the white surface, carving shallow valleys like miniature sand dunes.

John keeps working on these, a few minutes at a time, every day. One fine sharp piece of steel that looks more like a tiny letter knife than anything else, turns out to be the perfect detail tool, when he puts it to use next: he’s engraved a replica of an open palm into a corner of one of these pieces, and inscribes the fine creases, that form in the skin of the palm, into his creation to finish it off. He can just feel these fine lines under his own fingertips, just as he would if they were real, if they were those of a real living flesh-and-blood hand.

 

 

These past couple of weeks have actually gone nicely, despite the increasingly frequent dull, headache-riddled mornings. First of all, once Harry had been sent off with a flea in her ear for another severe cull of his stash of booze, John painfully eased himself into getting a little more sleep. It gets dark stupidly early at this time of year, anyway. And maybe it’s because Christmas is now on the horizon, but there’s a bit less abuse on his blog, and a bit more actual compassion.

After much begging, and the usual mild, laughable threatening, John had to upload more Sherlock pictures on his blog. He’d have to be brain-dead, or ridiculously naïve, to not see how all his readers really love reading him wax lyrical on the detective and his work. John is probably single-handedly responsible for making other people love Sherlock as well. He drawls on for paragraphs about how brilliant his work had been, how charismatic the man himself was, how much of a regret it is that the two of them never met. John muses things he’d have wanted to ask him, both on a personal matter and a professional one, and also on behalf of others, who had encountered him in cases and the like, who’d admired him, who’d hated him, and had done both. Not exactly emotionally-saturated drivel, but certainly a funny, and oddly touching read. He even includes quotes from some of the more infamous obituaries.

 

But one thing his readers will never know, is just how long John stares doe-eyed at the gorgeously moody mug shots of Sherlock every night, the light falling just-so on his curly hair and his brow and his cheeks, even in the grainy copies so used by newspapers. John keeps his personal collection of hard copies close to his chest – unlike a lot of things in the flat – and he studies them _all the fucking time_. He tries to copy them in his own anatomy line drawings, Sherlock’s features carefully, hesitantly captured in feathery pencil-and-paper.

 

Tonight John can’t sleep, for the cold, even stuffing the bed with every blanket he can get his paws on, and Gladstone purring loudly enough to sound like snoring, coiled into a neat furred heap in bed with him. Lying on his back in the dark uncomfortable suffuse of hot and cold, John finally relents, and paws at the side of the bed for his phone. He doesn’t care it’s going on three in the morning; he flicks it on, the sudden light is harsh on his eyes, especially in his fresh, raw, newly-consented sobriety, but maybe if he tires himself he’ll eventually force sleep to eventually come.

John flips through photographs he’s spent way too many hours poring over, studying Sherlock in full colour. It’s been weeks since he’d condensed his Sherlock snaps into one large collection, and still he cannot decide, whether Sherlock’s eyes are bright ice cold greyish blue, or piercing clear sea-greenish-grey. They seem to magically shift colour each time a camera captures them.

 

 

 

_12 th December_

 

Molly is of course well used to the cold, white light of St Bart’s post-mortem room. She works here. Spends hours and hours under the lights, and she also knows a handful of simple cantrips that are incorporated into her work. Compared to her, John is a complete fish out of water here. He hasn’t come to the hospital regularly for a couple of decades, and back then it was a little different.

Molly is neatly peeling skin and muscle off the torso of her latest subject ( _Female, Caucasian, fifty-eight years old, knarled-looking hands, quite a severe stoop to her back_ ), cat-like as she is crouched down, intensely focused, arms tucked in. John is slumped on one of the high, grey-topped tables across the narrow room from her, rubbing his temple. The blunt light is far from forgiving.

“Seriously, John, _are_ you okay?”

“I’m okay, I’ve already told you.”

“…Okay.”

She’s her usual mousy, apologetic self, even when John doesn’t sound as snappy as he privately wants to. He knows he shouldn’t want to, and he doesn’t _really_ care.

The cadaver she’s got her scalpels in this afternoon was someone who’d got caught in a rather sticky mess between a warring couple, and three days ago they were an interview room at the Yard swearing blind it was all a horrible accident. John _might_ put this case on the blog once it’s solved, if just for a break from Sherlock.

 

“You still have the ivory, right?”

“Yep, I’m going to start sculpting it soon.”

“Really? I’d love to see what you make once you’ve finished.”

John gives her a wry smile in reply. Molly blinks meekly at him; she suspects he knows he’s not getting her full attention.

“What about… the spell? What do you think is going to happen about it?”

At this, John drops some of his cynic’s mask. “Not a clue. So far I’m pretty sure carving bits off the ivory doesn’t affect it. And of course, I know absolutely sweet-fuck-all about spells like that, so it would be nice to find someone who’ll give me some help with it.”

“What does the spell even do, John? Do you know that?”

“No I don’t. My sister doesn’t either. She told me it was probably the clincher that made sure it didn’t get destroyed, once the Holmeses refused to take it. They either didn’t know either, or they don’t want to tell anyone. And Harry and her lot didn’t really want to get rid of it, because of how little we all know about it.”

 

Molly watches him closely, but she looks down whenever he looks up at her.

She’s talking to the ribcage under her hands when she asks “You said on your blog you didn’t want to get it into any trouble, because it had got into enough trouble, when the case got solved, and, um, Sherlock… ”

“Yes, yes. Of course.”

 

The silence that fills the room feels almost charged with electricity, or maybe even the air is hexed, like living breathing buzzing tension. John’s voice thins out in it, like the very air dilutes it.

Being someone with very little magic in him, John would obviously have no means to know what it’s like to be in the presence of someone who’s witnessed a resurrection. By default, he’s innocent, and this seems to fit, in a man who looks so simple and unassuming.

Quite ignorantly, he asks what he asks to those he trusts: “Did you ever meet Sherlock Holmes?”

 

Molly swallows, the back of her throat tasting like borax. “I never actually met him. I saw him, around the hospital, a few times. But I’ve met his brother, and I’ve sent him stuff, reports and stuff, on his owl. I think he was a bit traditional, having an owl and everything.”

John nods along with her, brow furrowed with thought. His voice is still low when he asks “Did anything... happen, when you met Mycroft?"

 

Molly blinks several times, mouth open but almost nothing to say. “Oh… I’ve, erm – it wasn’t… a big thing. Nothing really happened.”

John raises an eyebrow at her, but he doesn’t challenge her.

“Okay… ”

 

“You haven’t met him, have you?” It’s a surprise when Molly says this; she looks evasive as she does so, stepping to one side to grab another pair of forceps. “Mycroft Holmes.”

“Just at the party. Mrs Hudson practically ordered him to come over at some point, I didn't want to get involved."

She’s got her wary expression on again; if the family are a tricky subject, then necromancy is most definitely a step too far.

 

The quiet gets restored, and it gets them as close to tranquillity as it’s possible to get. Even when he shuffles off his table and comes closer, to get a proper look at the body Molly is opening up, John doesn’t say any more. In fact neither of them breathes a word, apart from the odd question or comment about the case. It all culminates with the knees being stripped of skin and muscle, the worn edges of cartilage being squinted quizzically at.

“Yes John, but you said they already said she’d had arthritis in both legs in their statement. I guess we were supposed to expect this.”

“Well, that was going to be something we weren’t going to be able to test. Because, of course, she got pushed out of the car and was incapacitated when the police found her.”

“So they were telling the truth?”

John dips the end of a syringe into the watery pool of synovial fluid. “I guess. If her knees were giving her this much grief, she was in no fit state to move anywhere. Let alone provide an alibi for a couple of stabbings.”

“Okay. I still have more thorough investigating to do, before I can confirm what the cause of death is. But now you know about this. It must help with your case,” Molly pats at the exposed ends of the knee joints.

“Yeah, thank you, Molly. I’ll keep in touch.”

 

 

 

Later on, back outside and wrapped up in his layers, John is halfway across town, and Covent Garden is starting to get dark, with nocturnal sprites entangled with trees like little sparkling wind chimes, and the first flurries of snow gleaming orange in the street light, hovering in the air like moths, fairy lights with nothing to be strung from. The cold is beautifully refreshing, after weeks of hangover stretched out into a tepid migraine.

John has someone to call, but that can wait for tomorrow morning. For now, he wants to just enjoy this approaching evening.

After decades of blending into the background, John is perfectly used to it. There’s only so much he can do, especially around magic, because growing up and living his life being guarded has fed his attitude towards anything that isn’t unusual. Just as magic has a reputation, so does lack of magic. It’s what John had to live up to: a normal life, whatever normal is. And while he wants to please people, he cannot stand _boring_. And he hates how his relationship with his family began to break down. It’s part of why he’s so drawn to powerful magic, and the charismatic people who are involved with it; while recuperating after being shot, John was under instruction to fill his life with something positive.

Nevertheless, perhaps it is already too late. John has already begun to succumb to darkness, and sometimes he wants _that_ life back, in his private moments.

 

Under the shelter of the half-outdoor plaza filled with streetsellers, John brushes the fine powder of snowflakes off coat and scarf, and finds himself snuggled up beside this rather eccentric old woman, with red sachets knotted all over the archway of her corner, packed right up to the low ceiling with shelves. Filled mostly with antique books.

She gives him an overexcited smile, craning up to adjust the glass jar hanging from the back of her stall, which holds an enchanted light inside it.

She excitedly asks John what he’d like to buy, which doesn’t help his feeling a little self-conscious. He distractedly tells her he’s just browsing, eyeing up a small basket full of A6-size prints. Most of them are of Michelangelo’s works; John pulls a slightly-faded photograph of _David_ out of its place and holds it up to the glow of the jar-light.

 

Then another thing catches his eye: a copy of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ bound in faded grey leather, the lettering barely a shimmer on the surface of the cover like an illusion. Coaxing him to take a closer look.

The pages are a little yellowed with age, and the writing upon them shimmers too, in print elegant yet furtive, and the illustrations are drawn in such a light hand, Narcissus and Echo, and Pyramus and Thisbe, and Perseus, and monsters and magicians and heroes all iridescent and almost alive on the page.

That’s the power of these classical myths for you. There’s always been the dividing line between believing them to have some truth, and them being nothing more than pretty stories, from when the ancient Greek storytellers first penned them, right up to present day. Despite being someone who doesn’t believe in fairytales, and who cannot draw the line between heroes and villains as clearly as the world preaches it ought to be, John understands the fascination of this poetry. He can see why they inspire such awe. This book has ensnared him like a flytrap, and he hardly realises what has just happened, even when he’s right up to book Ten.

Pygmalion has almost legendary status, especially in his native Cyprus. Practically leading a hermetically sealed life, he had very little interest in women, but celibacy didn’t seem to matter, not when he carved himself a beautiful maiden from a block of ivory. And despite his devotion, he couldn’t bring himself to admit he’d fallen in love with his creation. Even during the annual celebrations in honour of Aphrodite the love-goddess, he prayed at her altar in secret for a girl of flesh and blood to match his ivory girl. The goddess was moved so, that when Pygmalion returned to his girl, and kissed her one more time, her lips were no longer hard ivory, but soft skin. The classic kiss from the damsel’s true love to awaken her. Aphrodite had granted his wish and brought his girl to life, complete with a name, Galatea.

Very cheesy, John decided when he first read the ending of this story. But that’s the whole point. Everyone loves these sweet love stories. And the magic community crawls with strange mysterious retellings of these legendary blessings and curses, stories evolving with the times.

 

“They had a child together! They called her Paphos, like the city by the sea on Cyprus!”

“Shit… sorry, you surprised me.”

John indeed was taken unawares by the mad old lady, who’d been watching him over his shoulder.

“Can you not? You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry, sorry! But you’d been reading that for an hour. You can buy it, if you want it!”

John peers out to the streets and the sky outside, and it has got very dark very quickly.

“No… you’re very kind, but I’d better make tracks now.”

 

 

Once back home at Baker Street, John finds he hasn’t shaken off the story of Pygmalion. It has slyly tucked itself beside the big wonderful self-indulgent aspiration John has to carve Sherlock from his own ivory block. And after sitting on the idea like an unhatched egg, John now can’t decide whether this is going to be like discovering the fossil of something prized out of the earth, or fashioning the perfect tribute of a lost hero, or even simply celebrating a beauty he’s watched from afar.

He’s been poking at the smaller pieces over the past couple of weeks, creating a handful of rough shapes of hands and feet. Refining them will take another few weeks. John is already pleased with them, if you’d ask him, but he’s keeping his promise.

Standing at the mothership, close enough as though he could be saying sweet nothings to a lover, John silently spans his hands over its surface, trying to picture the arms and shoulders and chest he will hopefully turn this ivory into one day.

“What do you think, Sherlock?” he asks softly at the cool creamy-white surface. “I’m used to being underestimated. But what is everyone going to think, about this spell? I don’t know what its potential is, but neither does anyone else, for that matter.”

 

 

 

_20 th December_

 

This room has an effect that’s almost womb-like, as it was shut tight again after John stepped inside, but it’s so inviting, with warm mahogany pannelling and dark velvety upholstery and oxblood leather armchairs, matching the perch upon which the barn owl sits. She watches John with immense, near-spherical chocolaty eyes, tipping her head at an obscene angle, as if this utterly un-magic doctor is a complete alien, and she can’t help being tickled by it.

John is hiding the fact that she’s freaking him out, and keeping his head down, concentrating on this sketch of you-know-who’s eye that he’s been working on yesterday, and he’s still not totally satisfied with it.

No matter, it won’t fly away once John tucks it back into his pocket, once the door reopens to usher in the man he’s been sat in here to wait for.

"Mycroft, when did I last see you - that was the party, wasn't it?"

“Yes of c _ourse_ ,” Mycroft has his driest smile on. Which is more of a reaction to John’s warm greeting, though he won’t admit it; even as they shake hands his wrist has a prim stiffness to it.

“Care for a drink?” There’s a case of sherry and two small glasses, opening up from seemingly nowhere. Not what he’d prefer. But festive.

“Erm… just a small one. If that’s okay.”

“Of course,” Mycroft pours them out and hands one to John, which gets looked at wearily before he takes his first sip.

 

“I do apologise for such a slapdash conversation last week, but I believe it was rather unscripted… despite that, I have been more than slightly keen to meet you properly.”

John frowns through his smile, which shows a crack in his character. “How keen?”

Mycroft is still not unimpressed with John, and all the effort he’d put before this moment. And it is well within his power to work this conversation.“As keen as you had been to play cat and mouse with Revenue and Customs, or, more accurately, yourself and your sister had.”

 

John is sitting back down without any cues from his host. After a moment, Mycroft follows, his glass ending up on the table beside him.

“Dr Watson, recovering the official dismissal of the property from my parents, and clearing up the residue with the Convention in International Trade of Endangered Species, made what was to come next seem infinitely more difficult. And, no, don’t offer _more_ condolences – my parents received plenty from Harriet, which I presume might have been on your behalf as well… okay, possibly not. Not to worry… I never did have any intention of making this business a personal one. I am grateful that you took some time out to let all the dust settle before contacting me – Harriet and her superiors still make it quite clear the property is in the safest of hands, just as they did at the time.”

John has perfected his impersonal listening face, to the point at which even Mycroft is hesitant to assume anything.

 

“I have to say, I truly would never suspect you would have any connection to Sherlock Holmes.”

John blinks. That was a _big_ leap off subject. “Well, I never had much chance to see if that’d be true.”

Mycroft grins, which would make someone of a weaker constitution cringe. “The blog certainly is a joy to behold. Even posts that feature Sherlock at considerable length receive hits that reach four figures. You’re not alone, in admiring the man and his work from a distance, but your borderline emphatic, unabashed homage does set you apart.”

 

John can’t find any voice. Mycroft deliberately tones down the acid in his grimace as he adds “John, I’m trying to compliment you, God save me.”

With a very small derisive laugh, John sits back, looking at his glass, the delicate yellow spirit licking at the crystal, for a second or two. “I… I can see a little resemblance.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You are his brother, after all.”

 

“And _you_ , it would seem, could have been preparing for this for a long time.” Mycroft gestures to John’s left hand. “May I?”

It’s uncomfortable, holding out his hand for this solicitous man to examine.

“That’s charcoal, and you’ve been scrubbing it off until you’re pink. And here, under your shirt cuff, where you’d been leaning your wrist on a hard surface… from several angles. You sketch?”

Mycroft lets go, and John neatens the end of his sleeve with prudence. “Anatomical drawings.”

“Ah. Whatever else? First honed while at medical school, I presume.”

John hesitates, then nods. “I always thought of it as a hobby. And it didn’t really account to much. I never used to take it seriously.”

 

Mycroft doesn’t look so sharklike any longer, but measured, and almost compassionate. The closest Mycroft can get to that, anyway.

“What about magic, John?”

John now has a most blasé of smiles, shaking his head. “Sorry, Mycroft, I haven’t got an ounce of magic in me. And what I do know probably isn’t worth practicing, even if I could. So I don’t think I’d know enough of what I’d be talking about, if I argued the subject to you.”

Mycroft cocks an eyebrow at _you_ , which John pronounces with some grit. But, letting it sit for a few seconds, he gives his trademark icy laugh. “Heard any salacious rumours, have you?”

“I’m afraid to find out.”

“You don’t seem very afraid.”

John is far from amused. “I’m not. I see why I should be, but that doesn’t mean I am.”

“Well, that’s rather shrewd of you, John.”

The moment for John to feign ignorance has already long passed. So instead he just stolidly takes a long sip from his glass.

 

“John… necromancy is not what it is cracked up to be. And it is certainly not what the papers will have led you to believe. Raising the dead is one thing, but it is quite another to identify how the deceased ended up with such misfortune, and therefore how the life can be restored… and humans have peculiar little habits when it comes to minding the deceased.”

John clears his throat. “Where is Sherlock buried?”

Mycroft almost flinches. “Mummy insisted on a very quiet funeral, immediate family only. And on his being cremated. His ashes are under a plot of sweet williams in a quiet corner of Kensington Cemetery.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t ask me to trail you down there. I’m certainly not visiting with the family – my next pilgrimage will be on the 6th January first thing in the morning.”

John takes a breath to ask why, but stops himself. He knows why. Mycroft gives him a lovely long wearily sardonic look, before rising up out of his chair with plenty of poise, and stepping lazily across the room towards the window; even though it’s the peak of the day, the sky is opaque, with snow dusted thinly against the pane of glass.

John downs the last of his sherry, and then gets up, but not to follow straightaway. Instead he stops by Mycroft’s chair, resting one hand on the leather back of it. The sherry is warming him, and a strange stirring of sympathy is awakened, from how sombre the elder Holmes looks, eyes blank as he gazes blankly down, not at the falling snow and lights outside, and Westminster does take on a stunning atmosphere so close to Christmas.

 

John rubs his knuckles against the brass studs of the armchair backing. It suddenly sounds really, really haunting: Sherlock was famous once upon a time, getting into trouble all the time, and getting the world to start noticing him. And Sherlock was magical, as much as he took the rest of the world, and as much as magic could fit into the rest of his life. And yet, underneath all this, Sherlock was human, with a family, and living dangerously always carried a risk. It could have ended like this. And it did.

John can’t help think of Harry, of how Sherlock must have had a close family to fall back on, unlike John, not having a tight unit no matter how much he could want one.

The alcohol starts to settle in his veins and unwind his tightened mind, despite the slightly sickly aftertaste. It’s something he wants to distract himself from, on top of the grief in the air.

“We’re not alone,” John starts.

It’s not quite what he’d planned to say, but he decides it’ll get an interesting reaction. Mycroft turns to him offended, as if he thinks John is lumping the pair of them together. Which, ironically, is not what John is aiming for.

“I say _we_ , I mean… people, all over the world, have their own ideas about life, death, how they have their magical connections… ”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I spent a couple of months in Tanzania on my gap year, and what I really remember is seeing a few elephants.”

Mycroft leans on the pannelling beside the window, face unreadable.

“Well, we were only allowed to watch them from a distance.”

Mycroft’s eyes soften. “Wonderful creatures.”

“Mm. They are lovely, so intelligent, and… I don’t know how else to describe it, but they have... a kind of aura around them, how there’s so much folklore about them.”

“Fanciful.”

“Yes, but there’s one thing they do, they all go to a communal place to die. Live out the end of their lives in privacy. And when the rest of the group stop by the place, they all take turns to look at all the bones. Turning them over, picking them up to show each other… ”

“Is this remotely relevant?” Mycroft asks tiredly.

 

John feels mildly wounded. “Just think about it for a moment. It’s part of our own lives, what happens after they end, and so on… we almost take it for granted. I bet Sherlock encountered a lot of odd scenarios with serial killers, families of victims, people who all think they’re so high and mighty… I don’t suppose you believe anything, Mycroft?”

“In God? Certainly not. We’re born, we live our lives, we die… yes, there are ways in which the rules can be twisted, but I have no cause to believe there’s some transcendence who wrote everything… at any rate, if God does exist, somewhere in the universe, why would he construct this world with such obvious gaping cracks in it?”

John sighs, leaving the quiet untouched for a while.

“I think you’re right. I’ve never thought there’s anything about people that really makes us special in the grand scheme of things.”

“Not even when you discovered Sherlock Holmes?”

Now John laughs, genuinely, and Mycroft creases into his smirk again.

 

“We can be good people without having to believe in God, or deserve to go to Heaven or whatever. And if getting to go is what makes us different from animals, then that’s just very shallow.”

“My brother was very attached to our family dog, growing up. Positively heartbroken when he died. Dare I say, it was no small factor in developing his own understanding of the world.” Mycroft steps across to the owl, stroking a finger down her back.

“Being afraid to push the boundaries we ourselves set isn’t good for anyone. We were all children once, who asked dodgy questions, and frightened our parents, and dug up worms in the garden and wondered what they were doing there.”

Sherrin twists her head round, back ramrod straight until she resembles a feathered lighthouse, and she stares with what could nearly be called offense, at not being petted anymore. As Mycroft is now pouring two more half-glasses of sherry. “On top of this, magic is just as much part of the world as everything else. There are a lot more important things to get our feathers ruffled over… the people who mean the most to us, perhaps.”

John says nothing, as he receives his glass.

 

“Oh, make no mistake, John, I have my friends in all the right places. Including the Foreign Office, and the Department for Supernatural Affairs – no elephant alive could produce tusks of _that_ size, which means the magic to call that block of ivory into being would be serious enough on its own. Since we were able to clean off Professor Trevor, we could get back to getting the file closed on all his former property.”

“Is it closed?”

Mycroft’s devilish grin comes creeping back. “If it isn’t, they’ll have to prepare to answer to me.”

 

Not even this is quite enough to scare John. Instead he blithely holds his glass up. “Well, here’s to powers for good.”

“And good health throughout the new year.” The clink of one crystal against the other rings sharply over the panelled walls, like a midnight chime. Like a spell coming apart in the space of a second.

 

 

 

_17 th January_

 

“Oh, dear, I’m not going to bother you, am I?”

Mrs Hudson has materialised in the living room; she’s just here to find a particular book of cantrips or something, and flat B has the bigger bookcases, and books end up gravitating towards them as if they have a will of their own.

“No, not at all.”

“Are you sure? I just thought I ought to give you a bit of privacy.”

 

She caught John immersed in bits and pieces of ivory, a scene caught halfway between borderline-compulsive collecting and a debauched piece of 3-dimension jigsaw-esque art. He’s been roughing out a shape of a person from the ivory, on and off, for nearly a fortnight. Sometimes even working into the wee hours of the morning.

Each piece John pitches off is hammered off the mothership slowly, methodically, his hands similarly carving rhythm, which he had learned for the first time so long ago. And even then, it’s not fluid. He only pitches off one piece at a time, and each one is measured every which way. His collection of scrap bits of anatomy has grown, into a large handful of life-size and more detailed amputated hands and feet, and also eyes and ears carved into flat surfaces.

There’s a messy pile of line drawings, of mostly eyes; studies of the fine lines around the eye. You could see from a safe distance, how it’s the eyes that are stressing him out, how he’s hunched over his sketches of them. Redrawing them, tracing an outline on a fresh piece of paper, smearing here and there. He doesn’t get rid of much, which means trying to maintain order is one more thing on his mind.

 

Perhaps it’s something John only realised once he’d started eating into his supply of spare pieces of ivory. He’ll have to break the promise he made – to roughen out the shape of Sherlock, he’ll end up with more spare pieces. He will have more to practice on. But his breaking the promise is a bit of a bruise to his pride, which is something he’ll have to deal with on his own terms.

 

John badly needs to pause, long enough to take a breath. Ivory dust is reaching up to his elbows, his rolled sleeves slipping down his arms and needing to be shoved back into place every few minutes, rather distracting while he’s got his finest file running lightly over the surface of this piece, as if these tiny lines are being drawn in immeasurably slowly.

Mrs Hudson edges closer, leaving the book on one of the few available bits of free space, and she stoops beside John, wrapping her arm round his shoulders. He’s still got a dusty chunk of ivory in his lap, with the smooth globe of an eye carved into it, almost looking unfinished, as the arc of it is ringed with a slightly higher uneven ridge.

“When did you start doing this one?” She strokes at it with her free hand.

“Last night.”

 

“It’s lovely.”

“It’s _practice_.”

“Okay, but how _much_ practice do you need to do?”

She looks worriedly around the room, at the attempts of tidiness John has tried to make, and has let get on top of him.

“I don’t know,” John rubs the back of his hand against his forehead, which is aching. And the back of his hand isn’t covered in dust. “I just want to make sure _that_ ,” he points at the mothership, the rough outline of a full-size person of ivory, barely moved from the window in the corner, “is _perfect_. That’s it. I know it doesn’t sound like much. But that’s all I want.”

 

 

What Mrs Hudson cannot know, is what happened last time she found John, eleven days ago. She was literally seconds late for catching him thinning down the torso of his sculpture, just a bit, down the shoulders and back. And she wouldn’t have heard him talking quietly, musing how that day would have been Sherlock’s 38th birthday; she missed that, but he’d spent the day fairly quiet anyway.

She’s been consulting the cards regularly over the past week. They don’t have anything new to say, however she’s not taking that as a sign that she ought to do anything. The sprig of heather she put above John’s door has been plucked off, like the one before it: he’s still got some fight in him. He’s good at detaching himself from any of her offers for help. She’ll just rehang it when he’s not looking.


End file.
